


we all need someone to stay

by CoffeeAndArrows, moonlitprincess



Series: when you figure out (love is all that matters after all) [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Found Family, Post-Season/Series Finale, Post-season 7, about two months ish after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndArrows/pseuds/CoffeeAndArrows, https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitprincess/pseuds/moonlitprincess
Summary: “Why don’t you think this will work?”Daisy ran one hand through her hair, turning away with a frustrated curse under her breath, the kind of vehement, crude profanity that still made Sousa cringe.“Why -” he tried to ask again, but Daisy whirled back around, interrupting him.“Because you’ll leave too!”or, some good old post-finale angst because we're both still obsessing over it
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson & Agents of SHIELD Team, Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Series: when you figure out (love is all that matters after all) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885618
Comments: 13
Kudos: 209





	we all need someone to stay

**Author's Note:**

> hello!
> 
> a few things:  
> \- this is very loosely connected to the rest of this series, but pretty much just that they exist in the same post-finale timeline  
> \- in this timeline, the team stay at the lighthouse for roughly 2-3 months after the finale whilst regaining their bearings, sorting out what they want to do next, etc  
> \- this is about 2 months in, when everyone (except daisy who is v much not ready for the team to split up) has started to make plans
> 
> title from 'someone to stay' by vancouver sleep clinic

Mack was the one who noticed first. He’d been there, up in the Quinjet with them, had picked up on the soft glances and gentle teasing before Sousa had himself, so of course he would be the one who noticed the absence now. 

Well. Not absence... not exactly. It hadn’t stopped. 

For the first few weeks after their return to the Lighthouse (and thankfully, to the planet he was familiar with) the touches and glances and…  _ flirting _ , Daisy had called it, had been more frequent.

The first night they were back, after everyone else had headed to bed, Sousa had found himself on the floor of the Lighthouse’s common area leaning against the couch, gazing at Daisy. She'd looked so different - softer and gentler and more vulnerable - now that she had showered and was out of her Quake suit, wearing a pair of borrowed (sweatpants, she’d called them) and a t-shirt that revealed a litany of bruises along her arms. In a soft, tired voice, Daisy had finally regaled the parts of the story he hadn’t been there for. The fight with Nathaniel, knowing what it would take to take out the Chronicom ship and being willing to carry that through to the end. Waking up on the Zephyr to the warmth of Kora’s glowing hand over her heart and Coulson, Mack, Kora and May looking down at her with relieved tears in their eyes. 

With everything they’d endured so far, Sousa thought perhaps this should be just another day by now, but the idea that Daisy had  _ died _ ; it was enough to make his heart trip in his chest, his entire body seizing up with terror for a second and he only just managed to stop himself from bringing a hand to her cheek just to feel that she was real and warm and alive. 

Their conversation had drifted to other notable moments from the day after that - the fact that Fitzsimmons had a  _ daughter _ , Daisy explaining (or at least, attempting to explain) who the hell Flint was, the overwhelming reality that he was now existing in the  _ twenty-first century.  _ And of course, more notable than anything else - their kiss. 

There was a moment of hesitant silence, weighted with trepidation and awkwardness, before it all came tumbling out of Daisy’s mouth in a rush: that she liked him, of course she did, but as he could probably tell her life was beyond complicated and she had no idea what she was doing now that this fight was over or how a relationship of any kind would work between them. He’d never heard her this unsure in the short time he’d known her - nervous enough for her voice to crack - but that seemed to ease when he caught her hand in his and he’d promised her that that was fine. She’d flushed a little as he watched her - reverent and awestruck and probably falling a little too fast but she was  _ incredible  _ and how could he not? 

(She had kissed him again, after that conversation, slow and careful and grateful. Grateful that he was here, grateful that through some impossible feat of luck, they had ended up in the same time and place. He had smiled into the kiss, letting her take the lead, one hand lightly cupping her jaw as she leaned closer. He was grateful too.)

Those gentle moments between them hadn’t vanished. They hadn’t  _ gone _ . But something had changed in the past week or so, there was a hesitance now that was unfamiliar. Daisy had been confident from the day he met her - recklessly so, at times - despite being displaced in time and space and trying to save the world. Now though, she was verging on uncertain. She looked away when he caught her watching him, rather than smiling like she used to. When he did get to see that small, secret smile she brought out during private conversations when the team weren’t around, the light didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was putting distance back between them, and he couldn’t work out why.

He wondered, maybe, if he should step back. He hadn’t known her long. He felt like he had, and he could tell she did too, but in truth it couldn’t have been more than a few months. Perhaps he was overstepping. 

  
  


Mack reassured him he wasn’t, when he cornered him in the kitchen, both of them watching Daisy as she played with Alya on the other side of the room. There was a sadness in her eyes when she glanced over to them, and it made Sousa’s heart twist uncomfortably in his chest. 

“She does this,” Mack said quietly, once Daisy looked away. 

Sousa blinked. “Does what?”

“Exactly what she’s doing now. She pulls away. Puts up walls.”

Sousa nodded briefly, uncertain. He knew her type. And it wouldn’t have surprised him if she had done this right away - what he didn’t understand was that she was pulling away now,  _ after _ letting him in, after telling him how she felt, after spending weeks letting whatever it was brewing between them simmer carefully just under the surface. Unless those feelings had gone - she could have changed her mind, or… he didn’t know. 

“Don’t take a step back,” Mack told him, gaze shifting from Daisy to him. He turned, leaning against the opposite counter so he was facing Sousa instead. “You two clearly have something, even if it’s not the right time for it yet. Daisy, she’s…” 

He left the thought unfinished, leading Sousa to wonder where it had been going. 

“Don’t be afraid to push,” he said instead, clapping Sousa on the shoulder as he left the room.

  
  


So he pushed. 

Not immediately - he wasn’t sure about the idea, wary of pushing her too hard. But as things began to change around them, Daisy pulled further away. Plans were starting to form for the future, vague ideas about what came next and where the team would split up and go, and he needed to know what she wanted - from him, from  _ this _ \- before he made any decisions, because ideally, he wanted to go wherever she did. 

(He had only asked her what she planned on doing once, and she had changed the subject immediately.)

The more the quiet, easy comfort of having her family around her at all times began to unravel, the more bricks Daisy added to the wall she was building between them, and the more Sousa realised that Mack was right - if he gave her space to take this at her own pace, she might shut him out completely. He took a steadying breath, then tapped against the door of the bunk she had claimed. 

When she opened it, she smiled. It was a strange hour for him to be wandering through the halls of the Lighthouse, but she didn’t seem to mind. A hint of uncertainty flickered behind her eyes. “Hey.”

Sousa smiled. “Hey. Mind if I come in?”

Daisy took a step back, letting him into her room, the lack of teasing about him coming to find her late at night surprising, then concerning him. He must have stayed silent for too long or perhaps the look on his face gave him away, because Daisy frowned. “What is it?” she asked.

Sousa decided to take the plunge. Straight in the deep end, no turning back. “What’s changed?”

She looked genuinely confused, and Sousa mentally kicked himself - okay, taking the plunge  _ with  _ some context would probably have been helpful. 

“I - what?” said Daisy, blinking. 

“Something’s changed,” he said, taking a step forward. Instinct was compelling him to take her hands, the same way he had back at the speakeasy in the alternate timeline when he’d told her he would be the one to stay behind. He forced himself to ignore that instinct. “I can’t work out what,” he said carefully, “or why. But - something’s different for you.” 

“No,” she said, far too quickly and far too unconvincingly. She seemed to realise how easily he saw through her and a flash of the resilient determination he had seen in her a hundred times rose to the surface. But as she went to argue, the words caught in her throat and her jaw clenched. She didn’t speak for several moments. Sousa didn’t dare to either. 

“No,” she repeated eventually, this time sounding as though she was willing her response to be the truth. “It’s not.”

“It is,” Sousa said immediately.  _ Don’t let her push you away.  _ “You’ve stopped letting me in.”

A hint of panic flashed through Daisy’s eyes, and she swallowed. This time, he couldn’t stop his instinct to reach for her hand, but she didn’t let him, taking a step back. 

“We’re breaking up the band,” she murmured. 

Well that didn’t make anything any clearer. Sure, the team were making plans, but that was only to be expected - right? They had been back for almost two months, and camping out in this underground base was only ever supposed to be temporary. 

“I don’t understand,” he said, and she glared at him, frustration rolling off her in waves. 

“Of course you don’t,” she said bitterly. She ran one hand through her hair, and then stepped closer again. “You want this,” she gestured between them. “And I - I want this. But we can’t -  _ I _ can’t - it’s not going to work.”

“Why?”

When she met his eyes, she looked incredulous. “Fitz and Simmons are leaving. Mack and Yoyo already know exactly what their next mission is gonna be, May’s got a secret job she’s working on with Mack that nobody’s allowed to know about yet, Coulson will find some project to work on - he’ll find someone else to fix and then he’ll be gone. And - and  _ you. _ ” She sucked in a sharp, rattling breath and he could hear the tears, thick in her voice when she spoke again with such resigned, heartbroken certainty that it made Sousa’s stomach drop. “You have a whole different life to explore, a new century. We won’t work.”

The more she spoke the less sense she made; Sousa didn’t see how having a new century to explore equated with  _ them  _ now working, or how the team’s new life paths had anything to do with it, but her voice was getting stronger and the uncertainty he had seen when he first walked into the room was morphing into something firmer, harsher. She glared at him.

“Daisy -”

Daisy closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened, meeting his, her anger had disguised the emotions Sousa was trying so hard to untangle. “Stop,” she ordered. 

“Stop  _ what _ ?” demanded Sousa. 

“Asking questions! Trying so hard! Being here - just, just  _ stop _ !”. 

“Not until you start making sense.” This mattered too much to drop. “Why?” he asked persistently, “ _ Why _ don’t you think this will work?”

She ran one hand through her hair, turning away with a frustrated curse under her breath, the kind of vehement, crude profanity that still made Sousa cringe. 

“Why -” he tried to ask again, but Daisy whirled back around, interrupting him. 

“Because you’ll leave too!”

“I’m not  _ going _ anywhere Daisy!”

“Why  _ not? _ ”

Sousa blinked, stumbling over the question. “I… what?”

“Why aren’t you going anywhere?” Daisy demanded, eyes fierce and burning with anger but suddenly terrified too, catching him off guard. He stared at her, bewildered, the tension in the air fading for a moment. 

“I - I don’t know how to answer that?”

It was honest, which clearly tripped Daisy up for a second. She looked lost. Lost, and hurt, and well out of her depth. Sousa blinked and the expression was gone, but she couldn’t keep her desperation out of her voice when she repeated “Why not?” much quieter but more insistently than before.

Sousa shook his head with a frustrated huff. This felt like they were going around in circles. “You  _ know _ I have feelings for you. If I feel like this, why would I go anywhere?.”

She scoffed and it made something defensive and perhaps even a bit angry flare in Sousa’s chest. So she was scoffing at his feelings now? He forced himself to smother his indignance and slight anxiety, waiting until Daisy met his gaze and took a step towards him, fire blazing in her eyes. 

“That’s not good enough,” she said.

He  _ knew _ her anger was disguising deeper feelings. He did. But he couldn’t help it - something in him snapped at her response, a combination of her bitterness and her anger and her lack of faith in him and his terror that he’d changed the entire course of his life, banked everything he had and who he was on someone who was pulling away just like  _ that _ , all rolling into one and pushing him over his ledge of usual, carefully measured patience. 

“And why the hell is that not good enough?” he shouted. His words were so loud, they echoed off the cold concrete walls. 

“ _ Because it’s never been enough before! _ ”

  
  


She froze the moment she heard the words leave her mouth, instantly regretting them. Regretting all of this, every word she had said this evening, every bitter scoff and frustrated shout and terrified, angered protest. Sousa was trying  _ so hard _ . He - he was incredible. He was  _ good _ , truly good, good and kind and caring and accepting and -

Daisy looked away, unable to bear the expression on Sousa’s face. It wasn’t hurt, even though he had every right to be hurt. The frustration and bewilderment had faded so quickly into a calm understanding that it made Daisy feel far, far too seen. He had found a crack in her wall that hadn’t just given him a glimpse; it had shown him everything. She felt as though her whole heart was laid out for him to see and it made her skin tickle with terror.  _ Don’t cry _ , she thought, the voice in her head sounding suspiciously like a vicious foster brother she remembered having when she was 8.  _ Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.  _ She pressed her index finger and thumb to her eyes to stop them burning, but instead, she felt the tears coming faster.

She supposed it was too much to hope that he’d let her have this. Forget it happened, excuse himself and wish her a goodnight and they’d never speak of it again. (If she was being honest with herself, she didn’t want him to. The fact that he was still here, standing unwaveringly in front of her despite every inch of distance she’d tried to put between them … that said enough.) 

“It wasn’t enough for Miles or Ward or Lincoln,” she finally managed to say. It didn’t come out much louder than a whisper but the room was so still, so quiet, that she knew he’d heard it. She wondered whether to elaborate - it wasn’t like Sousa knew  _ who _ she was talking about - but when her eyes flickered up to gauge his expression, she could see that she didn’t need to explain. Of course she didn’t. He was a smart man. Daisy’s heart lodged her throat. “It’s … it’s not just about guys, or relationships. People caring about me has never been enough of a reason for them to stay. My parents. Every foster family I ever had. And now -” Her gaze shifted to the ceiling and she blinked quickly, fighting the tears back. “Turns out it’s still not enough,” she whispered bitterly.

(This wasn’t about him. She hoped, desperately, that he knew that.) 

She just couldn’t do it. This  _ thing  _ they had started. Not now. Not with the team having just decided to split up, not with The End hanging over her head, not with the people she loved leaving her  _ again _ . She couldn’t put her faith in him only to have him do the same. 

Warm, sturdy hands found hers. “I swear to you, I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly, earnest enough that Daisy had to look away, closing her eyes. “But I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

He had been there in the time loop, she reminded herself. He had been there for her over and over and over and over again. He had listened. He had helped. He had been the calm to her chaos, the anchor in the midst of an uncontrollable storm. And still, somehow, that wasn’t enough.

Daisy’s tears threatened to fall, and she took a small, shuddering breath, fighting to keep them at bay because the moment they started, she wouldn’t be able to stop them. Her voice was small, the whisper cracked and defeated. “I don’t know how to make me believe you either.”

  
  


It was the way her voice wavered that shattered something in his chest, and he reached up to brush a tear from the corner of her still closed eyes. This wasn’t something either of them could fix. 

But she wasn’t pulling away from him - not deliberately, not in the way he had first thought she was. She was trying to protect herself, trying to make sure that history never had the chance to repeat, and he couldn’t fault her for that. He couldn’t fault for any of it. The things he knew about her past barely scratched the surface, but in the short time he’d been by her side she had lived through more intense, high stakes, life threatening - and life  _ ending _ \- situations than most people dealt with in a lifetime.

_ Daisy's been hurt. Bad. _

Sousa swallowed, thumb lightly brushing her knuckle. He waited for Daisy to open her eyes, and if he hadn’t already been entirely convinced that there was nowhere else he wanted to be but by her side, the turmoil he found in her eyes when she opened them would have made the choice for him. If she needed more time before she could trust he meant every word he was promising, she could have it. 

“It’s okay,” he said. There was nothing else to say. This wasn’t about him. This was about people whose names he didn’t recognise, and it was about losing her team.

This time she couldn’t stop her tears, or perhaps she just stopped fighting them - whichever it was, it didn’t matter. Sousa smoothed down her hair, pressing a tender kiss to the top of her head and letting her fall into his arms.

  
  


“I should go,” he said softly, when her tears had stopped and she’d wiped her eyes and given him a smile - a real smile, one that sparkled beautifully all the way up to her eyes even as they were still damp. As he said it, he hoped perhaps she knew him well enough by now that his gentle smile would let her know that no matter what happened next, they were okay. He took a step back, heading towards the door. 

“Daniel, wait.”

He paused, hand on the doorknob, and glanced back at her. It was strange that at that moment, looking at him with tear streaked cheeks and a hesitant expression but an overwhelming look of relief in her eyes, Daisy looked more like herself than she had in over a week. She took a deep breath. 

“Do … do you think you could stay?”

They hadn’t defined the parameters of this - whether it was a  _ fling _ , a relationship, or something that transcended even those definitions - something like what Fitzsimmons had. (Sousa knew which of the three he was willing to put his money on, especially given how much time travel, timeline-hopping and saving the world had gone on just for them to end up here, with a chance for  _ something. _ ) For now, it had just been stolen kisses here, gentle touches there, the knowledge of both of their feelings resting safely between them. Sousa hadn’t minded. He could tell she wasn’t ready for more than that yet, and he had a lot of readjusting to do to this new life he now had. 

Tonight though, she wanted his company. She’d made plenty of jokes in the last couple of months about him being a boy-scout, about all the propriety of 1950s etiquette (which had honestly made him pretty sure that she thought the 50s had been as prudent as the Victorian era), about how he still flushed if she alluded to anything physical happening between them. This was different. 

She shifted her weight, biting her lip nervously. “I - I don’t mean like  _ that  _ -” 

“I know,” he said softly, offering her a small smile. He let go of the doorknob, sliding his hands into his pockets and taking a step back towards her. “I’ll be here as long as you want me.” 

Daisy swallowed, meeting his eyes. The tiniest hint of a smile crept onto her face, the corners of her lips curving upwards. “You might be here a while.” 

Sousa laughed, reaching out to pull her gently towards him. “I’m counting on it.” 


End file.
